Aaron Brennen Benavidez is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.

Funded by the Harvard Inequality and Social Policy Doctoral Fellows Program, the GSAS Division of Social Sciences, the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), and the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI), Aaron’s research examines institutional and city-level mechanisms shaping community college persistence, trajectory, and completion.

One arm of his research program turns to community college archival materials to empirically map and assess factors contributing to Boston-area institutional trajectories from 1965 to the present. His work also employs ethnographic and interview methodologies.

In 2018, Aaron won the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates, given once each academic year to the five most outstanding doctoral instructors of more than 2,000 Teaching Fellows throughout the university. In 2021, Aaron was also nominated for the Star Family Prize for Excellence in Advising at Harvard University.

Before his relocation to the Boston-area, Aaron earned a B.A. in Sociology and another in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, with highest honors. He also holds ten A.A. degrees from Sacramento City College, and an A.M. in Sociology from Harvard University.